GUANTÁNAMO: THE JOSÉ MARTÍ PARK. MEMORIES.

GUANTÁNAMO: THE JOSÉ MARTÍ PARK. MEMORIES.

  Four years ago my daughter and I traveled to Cuba. After 17 years of exile, I was not allowed to enter my country until Raúl Castro relaxed the laws. The hope of a change was renewed.

  We must see how time and distance alter our perception of things, of the places where we lived, plaied and, above all, the emblematic sites of our city. Everything seems smaller than we imagined it. Until our natal house. The rooms seemed to shrink over time even if they kept the same furniture and the same paintings.

  But what surprised me most was the José Martí Central Park in the center of the city. The parish Santa Catalina where I was baptized, first communion and where whe went to mass every Saturday in recent years, it seemed a small architectural model.

  The statue of our beloved apostle José Martí had been reduced in height by half and all the glass niches behind had been banned. They had cut trees or vines that formed a garland on each door of the Park.

  The old granite benches where we sat in our youth were still preserved. Each one of us according to the "urban tribe" to which we belonged or thought we dream to  belonge. Waiting if anyone was invited to a party of fifteen years or "descarga" to sneak in and dance a little and maybe meet a couple of your liking.

  To the right of the parish, they took seats at around 8:00 PM, the fine young women of the Pre-University Rubén Batista. There they waited for their hidden boyfriends or talked to each other displaying their Sunday finery clothes. In  front sat young men aspiring to raise some girl of the mentioned or their boyfriends, waiting for an opportunity to approach them.

  In the other side of the church rested, the old men and the old women, observing the panorama or enjoying the air of the park.

  In the background, or better, in front of the parish, were the ragged or the homeless or the poorly dressed, almost always elderly, left in oblivion by a system that always announced "a bright future in socialism"

  

  To the right of the Park, entering in front of the Culture House, young people who already had a partner or were openly engaged, took a seat next to a sister or a cousin.

  The young students of Secondary, others without employment still, and the male bachelors of the Pre University, we formed a row in the periphery of a  conten round the Park. All to observe the girls who in pairs paraded again and again around the whole block that formed the Park. Here you could hear the compliments, original or rude and hackneyed fines, to the girls who seemed thinner or more "vanes" According to the case.

  But what I remember most was the Provincial Symphony, that in a class of open shell-unmistakable sign of our Park, played the National Anthem. At the end of it, every boy fond of the ball, exploded in shouts and whistles, as in a massive hubbub, custom that was taken every time before starting a game was the hubbub in the stadium .

  Then, in the High Schools and the Pre University, when seeing the orthodox authorities these whistles as a sign of disrespect, began before entering classes in each school mentioned, the history of Our Anthem and other national symbols. But that never ended. It continued for years and years. It was already a habit incorporated into the few liberties that the youth-glorious stage of our life-that until I left Cuba.

Ah, Guantánamo, how many memories where with very little things communism gave us, we were happy, where it fit.

        Orlando Vicente Álvarez